Biff-bash-Ballsy was no match for courageous Cam
DAVID Cameron and Nick Clegg made speeches but – eheu, civitates! – we had to do without Ed Miliband. It was the British Chambers of Commerce conference in London, a day of trade talk, business chinstroking, even a scintillating presentation about, er, the chocolate industry (‘the world of chocolate hedonism and chocolate aspiration.’) Somehow Mr Miliband resisted it. And Lent doesn’t even start until next week.
‘A snub!’ cried the Lib Dems. No such thing, said Labour. Ed was busy elsewhere, valet-cleaning Harriet Harman’s new pink ‘Women to Women’ minibus, or something like that. She must be a speedy driver, that Harriet. After all, she always puts her foot down.
Labour, whose reputation for being antibusiness was hardly helped by Mr Miliband’s under-explained absence from the Chambers of Commerce, sent along Ed Balls instead. When biff-bash-Ballsy, the Muttley of Morley, is your emollient, your balm, your schmoozing diplomat du choix, jeepers you’re in trouble.
He glowered at the Chambers of Commerce audience. It glowered right back. After a couple of flattish jokes about getting businessmen’s names wrong, Mr Balls gave a barely perfunctory speech. He departed with shoulders rounded, fists clenched. Feel that sunny optimism, Britain!
THEconference was held in a lowceilinged venue which could have been the loading deck of the old Ark Royal. There were hundreds of delegates, for the Chambers are a rising force in the land. This conference tends to be less splashy than the CBI, more focused on the bottom line and domestic politics (the CBI is more pro-Brussels.) Chambers members run independent firms with some 5million employees but you won’t often find them at Peter Mandelson’s dinner parties.
During an opening debate about the health of the economy, snooty Europhile Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf was so glum, the audience laughed. The Chambers’ director general, John Longworth, later had a crack at BBC economics editor Robert Peston, saying that ‘ Peston-itis’ was the all-too- common tendency to spread unremitting ‘ gloom and doom’ about Britain’s economy. The audience loved that. These private-sector managers were can- do sorts, go-getters, business Darwinians. They loathe defeatism.
Mr Longworth, an unexciting orator with Carlos the Jackal spectacles, was pretty clearly not a Labour voter. He used Toryish phrases such as ‘the Great Recession’ and ‘our long-term economic growth’ and said that Mr Cameron had been ‘ courageous’ in seeking to solve the Europe question. It may not be long before we hear the words ‘arise, Sir John Longworth’.
Mr Cameron buttered up the delegates something rotten, a contrast to Mr Balls’s grumps. The PM told conference-goers how he admired their hard work, how he felt the pain of their early-morning starts, their working weekends etc. ‘Every time I lay a foundation stone, cut a ribbon, unveil a plaque, shake a hand, present an award, I see Britain coming back,’ he said. Almost wept it! ‘It fills my heart with pride to see what you have achieved etc., etc.’ Cue the violins, maestro.
Did the Tory leader overdo it? Metropolitan sophisticates might say so but not private-sector workaholics. That empathy with their miserable workload was skilfully done by Cam. He has lost weight. The double chin has almost disappeared. His Australian campaign manager, Mr Possum, has had him on a low-carb, no-booze diet and it is showing. Watch out, Kate Moss.
The cleverest part of his speech was a mirror-mickeying of Neil Kinnock’s 1980s ‘if Margaret Thatcher is re-elected, I warn you not to be young, not to fall ill’ speech.
MRCameron promised not to do a Kinnock accent (it might have lost him several seats in Wales) but Miliband’s Labour was worse than Blair and Brown’s, and if it won the election ‘I warn you not to grow your business, because they’ll come after you. I warn you not to take people on, because they’ll slap taxes on you. I warn you not to create wealth, because they’ll demonise you.’ Gulps. Demonise: now there’s a word with some election-campaign history.